"We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell." -- Molly Ivins

Friday, April 13

Friday Bird Blogging: Fox Sparrow

Before I saw a Fox Sparrow, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to identify it, making sure I knew the field marks, etc., so I didn't mistake it for a song sparrow.

Turns out this was a bit of a wasted effort on my part-- after weeks of sorting through song sparrows asking myself "could this be a fox sparrow?" I finally saw one and it is unmistakable for a song sparrow. True, the basic form of it is similar, but it's much larger (probably at least 50% bigger) and while the song sparrow has a dominant white with brown & black mixed in, the fox sparrow, when seen from above, is much more brown. In short, if you see a bird which looks like a big, fat, brown song sparrow, you've probably got a fox sparrow in your sights.

I can only identify a few on the fly (song, savannah, fox, american tree & white-throated sparrows I can do without consulting field guides). I'm fortunate enough to be able to look over my photographs later, which gives me a lot of time to go over field marks, but there are -so- many varieties of sparrows that it will be years before I can id most of them.